This video is the Day 2 paddle of the Michigan Inland Waterway. No locks today, but on Day 3, there is a whopper of one! The biggest challenge to this day of paddling was the wind and waves on Burt and Mullet Lakes. However, as with most things, the more you do it, gained experience pays off. Honestly, we should not have been out on either lake in these high winds. What would happened if the canoe were to flip in the middle of Mullet Lake with 50 degree water? Unless there was a boater nearby to assist, we would have been in serious trouble.
On Day 2, we paddled smarter so we were a bit safer. To start the paddle, we did not attempt to depart on the shores of Burt Lake at the Burt Lake State Campground. Instead, we used the point of the Sturgeon River mouth and Devoe Beach to make our Burt Lake entry. We leveraged the protection of the shore on Burt Lake to make some great progress. This approach made it easy for us to leave the beach even in the higher winds and make our way around the break wall of the mouth of the Indian River. Once we entered the Indian River, the conditions improved tremendously.
The closer we paddled to Mullet Lake and the wider the confluence of the Indian River entered Mullet Lake, winds were not too bad. However, when we totally exited Indian River and left the protection of a small point, the full wind and waves from the southwest needed to be addressed. We decided to take on the wind and waves directly and paddle to the southwest shore of Mullet Lake. Though it took us 1-2 hours and lots of hard paddling, we eventually entered the protection of this shoreline to almost flat water! Once here, we made efficient progress of several miles on a northerly paddle.
Since Aloha State Park was on the east shoreline, we eventually had to leave the protection of the southwest shoreline and make the trip across. This was the most dangerous part of our three days of paddling. The waves were large and coming from two different directions! Add some whitecaps, and well, this was not for the timid! We eventually made the crossing. To put this crossing into perspective, the next morning, a camper across from us who had around an 18′ foot boat saw us at Burt Lake and made the connection that we had paddled Mullet and was flabbergasted! He had tried to take his boat out from Aloha State Campground the evening before and said the waves were too large for him to continue and turned around! This was when we were paddling across Mullet Lake!
Here are the links if interested in doing a similar trip. Click below:
Check out the video below and thank you!
